The Jimmy Diresta 48” Band Saw Restoration: Disassembly

[Music] hello keith rocker here finished machinery.org guys today i'm introducing you to a new project for the shop this project a little bit unexpected kind of came in and uh things have kind of developed over it over the last week or two that is going to cause this project to kind of bump its way up in my pecking order as to what's going to be done uh next so let me give you a little bit of background on this and this why we're kind of taking it putting a little bit of higher priority on it so number one this is a bandsaw uh it's a 48 inch bandsaw the wheels are 48 inches in diameter which in the band saw world is huge usually about the largest bandsaw you see is a 36 inch i've got a 36 inch crescent in my shop back there and that's a big band saw this is a huge bandsaw and outside of going to something like a banned sawmill this is about the biggest ones that were built it was made by the j.a feyen company out of cincinnati ohio uh believed that it was made in the late 1800s based on some evidence that i have dug up around a couple places i won't go into all of that but uh i actually have a catalog from the late 800s that shows this machine in it and in fact here's a cut from that catalog showing it and one thing you'll notice is that that bottom wheel is such a large diameter wheel that in order to be able to stand on the floor and use the table of this the wheel actually has to go beneath the floor uh yeah it's a it's a big band saw when i found it it was actually up on some cribbing that allowed that wheel to stay on there uh but anyway that's the way way the way that it was done originally was just had that wheel tucked down into the floor beneath it now uh i found this bandsaw actually i was contacted by a gentleman over in waycross georgia that bought a piece of property had a shop out back it actually used to be an old airplane hangar from the 1940s that the previous owner had moved there he was notorious about going to auctions and buying junk and there was a bunch of junk in this building including a bunch of machines that we feel like were all acquired at approximately the same time a lot of the machinery that was in there almost all the machinery that was in there was what i would call junk and mainly because it just had so many parts and pieces missing or broken on it that it would be i'm not going to say impossible to restore but it would not have been practical to do restorations on one of the exceptions in there was this bandsaw and when i first saw it it was all put together i took this apart we had to take it apart to move it more on that in a minute but we believe that all the machines that are in this shop came from rice yard rice yard is a railroad yard in waycross georgia is only a couple of miles from the shop where we found this stuff at and uh it is a major uh railroad yard that in the serves the eastern united states is currently owned by csx back in the day it was owned by the atlantic coastline railroad and of course atlantic coastline merged mergers mergers over the years it's now what is comes under the conglomeration of csx still operational don't know a lot of the history about rice yard i actually tried to look up when it was founded i know it was founded probably in the late 1800s early 1900s the gentleman that kind of started that railroad industry down there kind of started in the 1880s the plant system uh and i think it's henry plant was kind of the guy that kind of started all that railroading in that area and it dates from the 1880s i think that's probably about when what became rice yard was kind of established and i believe that this bandsaw was probably part of that original complex of machines down there and it was probably used for doing car work in addition to working on locomotives they had to keep the railroad cars which a lot of that stuff was made by in bio and wood back in those days so um anyway that's kind of the history i know now when i found this stuff or i was contacted about it i went over i actually put a post up on my facebook page said anybody's interested in this saw contact me i'll hook you up with the owner and i was kind of planning on staying out of it but uh several you guys did reach out to me and i as promised i connected with the owner and eventually a deal was made between a gentleman named jimmy deresta and the owner now i mean you guys may know who jimmy dress is because he is a major youtuber out there really huge channel does all kinds of cool stuff he does a lot of band saw work when he saw this he said he had to have it jimmy's a friend of mine we've been friends for a long time i know him personally uh he sent me a message says i want the saw i hooked him up with the owner they worked out a deal he purchased the saw and then he asked me if i could help go get it retrieved since he lives up in the new york area i said sure glad to do it so me and a friend of mine andy knowlton andy's actually been on my youtube channel in the past he used to live here in tifton area he actually lives over near waycross now where this stuff was at i reached out to him he came over and spent the day helping me get this stuff loaded up it was a job loading it up i didn't get any video footage that day it took all day long we had some mechanical problems in the equipment we were using long story i'm not going to get into but at the end of the day we got the band saws and we got them moved here and that's now in my shop and helping jimmy out i told him hey why don't i restore it for you before we send it up i think it'd be a fun little video series and uh honestly selfishly uh doing a collaboration with jimmy i think will help my channel because jimmy's again a much larger channel than what i have so hopefully that'll help pick up some new viewers uh doing this project for jimmy that's kind of my selfish reason for volunteering to do this but also because i think it'll be a fun project all in all the saw doesn't appear to be in terrible condition uh i mean the wheels are turning it's got babbitt bearings on it the bottom wheel was turning great we had to take the bottom wheel off and the table and stuff off the stuff you see here in order to move it so that's the reason it's separate but it was all together and for the most part it was complete and for the most part i think we could have put a motor on it and probably ran it but it is in bad need of some tlc and we are going to do a full-blown restoration on this project so anyway there's a quick introduction that wasn't too quick but there is an introduction this project my first step is i need to get this thing stripped down to the main casting so that we can start getting all the old paint and rust cleaned off of this get that prepped for painting get it painted and then that will become the the foundation that will start rebuilding this saw notice it's got wooden rims on the wheel so you got steel spokes but the the rims are are steam bent oak i believe that's oak it may be ash looks like oak though uh of course has a rubber tire on the outside we'll have to pull that off and repair it it's just falling apart i've already talked to the guys at woodworkers tool works they said they can get me tires for this thing so anyway we got a lot of work in front of us let's get started getting her stripped down so that we can really get started in earnest on fixing her up so first thing i want to do is get this wheel this top wheel off since we've already got the bottom ones off kind of start from the top and work down there's some bearing caps these are babbitt bearings up here i'm just going to go ahead and pull this off there's just a couple of bolts holding those one on this side on there's two bearing caps on the front one in the back looks like they got well i can't tell how many screws it's got right now let's see there's that one there is one more right here looks like there's only three it's an odd bearing cap there must be some clearance issues on the other side or they would have put one over there go ahead and pull that bearing cap out it looks like they have we're running grease in these babbitt bearings instead of oil which is kind of a no-no but the shaft looks to be in good shape um we'll have to decide at some point whether this needs new babbitt bearings or not that bearing's out of the way before we pull this wheel off i want to get a the gantry on here so i got that cap out of the way we can put this strap on here [Music] all right that should support that and let's get this back bearing cap off that bearing cap comes off as well and that bearing looks to be in pretty good condition and i don't see the the same level of grease as i saw on the other side all right let me get this stuff out of the way all right and should be able to just kind of lift this wheel up come out with it lost the gasket there no big deal shim rather all right got that wheel off and out of the way disconnect it here and we'll continue disassembling so this um whole bearing here it pivots you got an adjustment in the front this adjusts the tracking of the blade by tilting the back and forward there's a pin through here that that's pivoting on i've already started kind of knocking that pin out and [Applause] get this bolt out right here i think i can get it out by hand there we go i should be able to knock that pin on that the rest of the way now [Applause] that should yeah all right let me get these tools out of the way we're going to try to get that out trying to decide if i want to use the gantry for this i'm going to have to finagle it out of there i don't think i'm gonna be able to use the gantry all right there we go now come out sideways [Music] all right so i took the hand wheel down here we cranked this all the way up so that this uh plate is really the screws disengage from it now i want to take this plate off the front where we can just get this out so uh find the right uh found the right sockets here we'll go ahead and get these out that one's bent there we go one side off okay so this should come out of there i might might get the gantry and pick up on that i don't want to have to tote it down the ladder all right that should come right up there it comes i still got my adjusting rod here with it though what's going on with that there it goes there we go all right coming down with it i don't know if you can see all those little spiders running around there but uh we're gonna fix that so next thing i want to try to do is get this uh hand wheel off the bottom so that we can get this screw out and i think we'll pretty much have all this disassembled so there's just one set screw on this that's a 3 8 looks like so i'm yep to loosen that up and uh see we can get this handled off hand wheel off make sure i got it good and loose in fact i think i'm going to take that set screw all the way out just in case they got that uh shaft drilled on the inside where it's going up into it probably not but you never know and that'll make it a pain to get off so we'll play it on the safe side plus if i take it completely off i can squirt some penetrating oil up in there which will help get some oil down inside of that to loosen it up and get it off of there so you probably can't see it but the shaft is sticking out a little proud down here on the bottom i'm just going to take a wire wheel and quickly hit that knock any rust or anything off again that should kind of help it uh come off [Music] i'm going to hit her with some penetrating oil this is a crc product called knocker loose which i got turned on to a couple years ago and i really like it it has uh been real happy with it so uh we'll put a little bit of that on there it'll kind of i'm gonna give that a few minutes to let it kind of creep a little bit and get down in there and we'll see we can get this one thing i will note is up here you see this little boss right here there is a piece of metal back here in the back and it's a lever that goes in here and there's a whole spring mechanism it's actually not hooked up right now but what that does is it there's a weight a counterweight and it pushes up on this whole assembly and it just kind of helps keep tension on the blade in addition to what you do by moving it up you just always got a little bit of upward tension on there so even if you something happens and bounces it's just constantly putting upward pressure on there so when i'm pushing this off the bottom i'm gonna have to make sure we get all the way down all right we'll let that sit for a few minutes let's see if we can get that out all right i'm gonna come over here i got a brass punch and let's see if we can get this thing moving down [Music] all right it has moved i can see a it's actually got a shoulder up in there but it's moved maybe a sixteenth of an inch so there we go and this screw should just lift out of here now there we go and while we're in here i'm going to go ahead and pull this out this is just the pivot pin for that lever that's up in here that we were talking about a while ago and we'll go ahead and pull it out there we go and that should come right out the back and you can see this lever kind of has a hole in the back there's a place here where a rod goes down to another level before that has a counterweight on it but we can get that out and with that i think we got everything pretty much disassembled in this upper frame the only thing left in here is this uh nest put that in the garbage dirt daubers all right so coming right over to the front now we've got this uh piece here that captures this uh arm that you can adjust up and down and your guide is down here so this basically is where you adjust the height of your area your blade that you're going to cut with and let's see we can get these out [Applause] here we go and this should come out one of my lead hammers here all right so here's where that bar just came out and on the very front of this saw there's this piece here there's it's dovetailed in there's waves on the top and there's an adjustment screw here on the side to adjust this up and down i'm not exactly sure why you would need that because you can move the whole thing up and down i don't know why you would need this fine adjustment here or whatever it is but this here this is all rusted up it's it's i can turn it a little bit but it's not really moving very much so i want to do this kind of get the rust cleaned up off of that with a wire wheel and see if i can just screw this all the way up and off so i'm gonna get in here with the wire wheel and just clean that up real quick just trying to get any crud out up here on the top and get some penetrating oil going down in here and also get something going down here let me get some leverage on this uh hand wheel down here see i think i need to get one more oh yeah all right let me clean that up the back side up there it's not turning too bad but i need the leverage of this wrench to turn it we'll take it all the way to the top all right we are all the way up we can slide this off the rest of the way there we go so next i want to get this knob off the bottom so that we can pull that out and there is a tapered pin in there it's pretty easy to tell this is the small end of the pin that's the largest of the pin so let me grab a hammer and a punch we'll uh see we can knock it out right there [Music] it moved get a little bit smaller punch that'll go through that hole there we go [Music] come off there we are and now that should just come right out the top here a little persuasion there we go and i'm just going to put this back together pin back in there for safe keeping and we'll put that up i just thought i'd show this real quick i've been looking at this machine and if you look up underneath there was a tag right here i think this is a serial number tag that unfortunately has been removed but if you look up underneath it it's kind of black in color and then you've got this green on the outside my initial thought was was this machine was originally black and then it was painted green at some point in time but i noticed when i was working over here you can see the remains of a little gold decal right here and that is on top of the green paint so that's kind of got me second guessing myself as to what the original color was was it black or was it green this green would be very typical of a victorian era machine such as this one built in late 1890s so i'm kind of leaning toward this green as being the original color now as for this decal if anybody out there has an example of what this decal was let me know because i can get one recreated if i have a good picture all i can kind of see is a little bit of the a badge shaped over here on this side it's in pretty bad shape you can't read it or anything uh but i would love to be able to recreate that uh i could get my buddy ryan sellers who does little water slide decals like this to recreate that if i can come up with something so let you sluice out there see if you can help me out there so we're moving down and this part here is what the table mounted to and you can see we have a a trunnion built in here that allowed this table where you could tilt it so there's a couple of screws on the other side i'm hoping i can loosen it up and this will pop right out it's not too badly rusted into place but before i go too far we're going to give it a good coating of penetrating oil get it all in there real good [Applause] [Applause] all right here's one there's the second one now let's see we can oh yeah it's gonna come right out look at there a guard down here found the right socket for that go ahead and pull it out there we go and we got this guide there's a piece of metal in here that this just pivots on we got a set screw up on the bottom i'm going to take my wire wheel and try to knock some of that rust off of that shaft so we can slide it off pull this screw out here there we go here with the knocker loose there we go and she came right off good deal only a few more pieces left we're over on the back side of the machine and there's this bracket that holds this brush on i can actually pull that out with my fingers so we'll go ahead and pull that out and it was originally also attached right there i think we loosened that up and pulled that bottom wheel off this brush would have gone up against the wheel and just kept any anything from getting on it so i think this is the last piece really to come off of this saw but this is a guard believe it or not they had a guard on this back in the day most of these machines from this era did not have guards and i believe that's original [Applause] so a couple of set screws in here holding this in place and i believe that's going to come off without having to bang on it let's see got to get them kind of coming out together there it comes so i think i am going to go ahead and like pull these little um bolts and stuff i think this had something to do with this auxiliary table that we took off and we had to move it let's find the right socket for it i believe it's this one right here there we go see if i can get those out put a little penetrating oil on them i think those are just threaded in there see if we can get lucky here oh yeah that didn't take much at all the ease in which the stuff is coming apart is a good sign that even though it was set up for a lot of years i think it was mostly under shelter and not in too bad shape [Music] all right well i think we've pretty much got most everything taken off that i want to take off maybe a few little bolts here and there they're still in i'll get those in a minute but no big deal but all in all i think we're ready for the next step with this and what that will be is we got to get this thing stripped cleaned my game plan usually when i do something like this you know i've got it stripped down we're going to take it outside and i will probably spray it down with a really good uh paint remover that will bubble this paint off as much as possible and then i'll come in here with a pressure washer with a turbo tip on it and try to knock as much of that stuff off as i can we're not going to hurt anything by by pressure washing this machine at this stage so that's kind of the next step i probably won't show that on camera it's just messy to have the cameras out there while i'm doing that but it tends to work pretty good so like i said we'll uh we'll put some paint stripper on it pressure wash it and then after that my buddy brock will come in here and attack it with the wire wheel and get all that old stuff off and then we can start looking what we need to do next probably going to have to put some body filler in this in some places that's my guess usually on old castings like this they're not perfect so we'll do a little bit of cosmetic work and uh then paint it i'm gonna get up with jimmy deresta and see what he wants to do about color i had previously had just a text messaging back and forth or some kind of messaging back and forth asking about color he didn't seem like he had a big preference one way or the other but like i said i feel pretty good that this uh green is probably original so if he doesn't have a problem with that we may go back to that kind of greenish color just to kind of keep it as close to the original as possible if not probably go with black and i don't think you can go wrong with a black on an old machine of this vintage most of them were probably painted that color so there we go guys um that's gonna be a wrap as always thanks for watching please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already thumbs up and comments are appreciated hit that bell icon to get notifications of new videos being posted to the site here and guys we'll catch you on the next video again thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 87,306

Rating: 4.9569149 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Woodworking, Metalworking, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, band saw, i make, jimmy diresta, bandsaw restoration, j a fay and co, jimmy diresta bandsaw, old woodworking machines, owwm, machine shop, machinist, woodworker, woodworking

Id: PUPpnigFLCQ

Length: 32min 40sec (1960 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021